• mini-symposium

• coronary microembolisation

The launch of the mini-symposium format in this issue of Heart is a new venture and an attempt to bridge the gap between editorials and full education or review articles. The mini-symposia are going to be a regular feature in the journal and comprise a number of editorial length contributions, usually 3–5, dealing with different aspects of a particular subject. We commission international experts to act as guest editors, and they are closely involved in choosing authors who provide particular views for the symposia. We are confident that this will achieve a balanced, high quality, and contemporary insight into many interesting areas of cardiovascular medicine. It is not our intention to reduce the status of our normal stand alone and linked editorials, but rather to complement them with the new mini-symposium format.

Professor Gerd Heusch is our first guest editor and we hope that you will find his mini-symposium on “Coronary microembolisation” both interesting and informative. As ever we keen for feedback and suggestions from the readership.